Epson EcoTank ET-2800 vs Canon PIXMA G7020: Which Cartridge-Free Printer Is Worth It?

Both of these replace cartridges with refillable tanks and bottles, which is the single biggest change you can make to inkjet running costs. The choice between them is not really about ink - it is about whether you need an office machine or a simple home printer. The Canon PIXMA G7020 adds an automatic document feeder, fax, automatic duplex and three and a half times the paper capacity. The Epson EcoTank ET-2800 does not, and costs considerably less.

Quick verdict first

1. Need to copy or scan multi-page documents? Take the PIXMA G7020 for its 35-sheet ADF.
2. Want automatic double-sided printing? Only the G7020 has it.
3. Printing plain documents and the occasional photo at home? The ET-2800 does that for much less money.
4. Printing more than about 100 pages a month? The G7020's 350-sheet capacity stops being a luxury.
5. Printing fewer than 30 pages a month? Neither - the purchase premium will not pay back.

Side-by-side specifications

The economics of tank printing

The case for either machine is the same: you pay more up front and much less per page. A set of ink bottles costs a fraction of what equivalent cartridge yields cost, and the tanks hold enough that refilling is an occasional event rather than a monthly chore.

The break-even point matters. At roughly 30 pages a month, a tank printer takes years to recover its purchase premium over a cheap cartridge machine, and the printer may not last that long. At 200 pages a month, the payback arrives inside a year and everything after that is saving. Be honest about which of those you are.

Between these two specifically, the running cost difference is small. Both use bottled ink at comparable prices. The 130-dollar gap in purchase price buys features, not cheaper ink.

Paper handling: the real gap

This is where the money goes. The ET-2800 has a single 100-sheet tray and manual duplex, meaning you flip the stack yourself when prompted. For a household printing school work and letters, that is acceptable. For anyone printing reports or double-sided documents regularly it becomes tedious quickly.

The G7020 offers a rear tray and a front cassette totalling 350 sheets, automatic duplex, and a 35-sheet automatic document feeder. The ADF is the feature people underestimate - copying or scanning a ten-page document on the Epson means lifting the lid ten times.

The G7020 also has Ethernet, which the ET-2800 lacks. On a home network with an ISP router that steers devices between bands, a wired connection removes an entire category of connection problems.

Print quality

Both produce good plain-paper text and respectable photos for tank machines. The Epson's higher stated resolution and its four-colour dye setup give it a slight edge on photo gradients; the Canon's pigment black gives slightly crisper plain-paper text. In practice the difference is small enough that neither should decide your purchase.

What will decide photo quality is paper and driver settings rather than the machine. Setting glossy paper in the driver when glossy paper is loaded matters far more than the specification sheet.

What goes wrong with tank printers

Cartridge-free does not mean maintenance-free, and this is the part reviews tend to skip.

They still clog. The printhead is fixed, not part of a replaceable cartridge. If the machine sits unused for weeks, nozzles dry and you run cleaning cycles to recover them. On the Epson the head is not sold as a user-replaceable part on consumer models, so a head that cannot be recovered is effectively terminal - see Epson error 0x97 for how that tends to present.

They have waste ink systems. All those cleaning cycles go somewhere. Epson machines eventually report that parts are at the end of their service life, covered in our ink pad guide. Canon machines produce support code 5B00. Both are capacity limits, and cheap ink encourages the cleaning habits that bring them forward.

Ink level sensing is approximate. Tank printers estimate consumption rather than measuring it. Check the physical tank windows rather than trusting the software readout, especially after a run of cleaning cycles.

Setup and software

Epson setup runs through Epson Smart Panel and is generally straightforward, though most EcoTank models are 2.4 GHz only, which causes trouble on routers with a single merged network name. Canon setup uses the Canon PRINT app, with Ethernet available as a fallback on the G7020.

On both, the initial ink charging cycle after first filling the tanks takes several minutes and uses a noticeable amount of ink. That is normal and only happens once.

For ongoing management, both expose a built-in web page at the printer's IP address, which is worth bookmarking - it gives status and network settings without opening any app.

Adding either one to Windows or macOS

On Windows 11, install the manufacturer's full driver package before connecting, then open Settings, then Bluetooth & devices, then Printers & scanners and confirm the printer appears once rather than as duplicate entries. Select it, open Printer properties, and check the driver name on the Advanced tab - if Windows has substituted its generic "IPP Class Driver", you lose scanning, ink level reporting and maintenance functions, and you should reinstall the vendor driver. If jobs stall rather than print, press Windows+R, run services.msc, right-click Print Spooler and choose Restart.

On macOS 26 Tahoe, open System Settings, then Printers & Scanners, click the plus button and pick the printer, preferring the Bonjour entry over a raw IP address. Then open System Settings, then Privacy & Security, then Local Network, and grant permission to Epson or Canon software - since macOS began gating local network access, this is the most common reason scanning software cannot find a printer that prints perfectly well.

For the G7020, using Ethernet and a DHCP reservation in the router is the most reliable arrangement available and removes an entire category of future problems. The ET-2800 has no Ethernet, so a static IP set on the printer is the next best thing.

Which should you buy?

Buy the Epson EcoTank ET-2800 if you want the cheapest route into cartridge-free printing, you print plain documents and occasional photos, you rarely copy multi-page originals, and manual duplex does not bother you.

Buy the Canon PIXMA G7020 if you run a small business or a busy household, need an ADF and fax, want automatic duplex, and value the larger paper capacity and Ethernet connection. The extra money buys workflow, not ink savings.

If neither is right for you

Two honest caveats. First, if your printing is mostly black text, a mono laser is cheaper still per page, never clogs, and has no waste ink system to fill - see inkjet versus laser printers. Tank printers win on colour volume, not on text.

Second, if you print rarely, no tank printer will pay back its premium before its own maintenance limits arrive. Our guide to ink tank versus cartridge printers walks through the break-even calculation with numbers, and our cost-reduction guidance covers the wider picture.

If you already own one of these and it is clogging, refusing to recognise ink levels or throwing a waste ink message, the choice between repair and replacement is not always obvious - you can get help from a printer specialist to work out which side of the line your machine is on.

See also the Epson support hub.